36 Photographic Proofs That Iceland Is A Miracle Of Nature
Iceland might be a small and remote nation, but it also happens to be one of the most picturesque as well. Iceland attracts millions of photographers and travellers, all eager to embrace the breathtaking Nordic landscapes with their bodies, souls, and, of course, cameras.
The geologically young island is situated at the junction of the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans and the North American and Eurasian continental plates. Its complex geographical history and position has created a unique and contrast-filled Icelandic landscape full of volcanoes, geysers, glaciers and fjords.
If you’re not yet convinced that Iceland must be your next destination, here are 37 photographs with astonishing Icelandic scenes to prove that it should be!
(via: Bored Panda)
Image credits: Menno Schaefer
Image credits: Milko Marchetti
Image credits: Antony Spencer
Image credits: Einar Gudmann
Image credits: extremeiceland.is
Image credits: Gunnar Gestur
Image credits: Yves Schüpbach
Image credits: coolbiere
Image credits: Skarphedinn Thrainsson
Image credits: Wim Denijs
Image credits: Alexandre Deschaumes
Image credits: Gunnar Gestur
Image credits: euskadi 69
Image credits: Peter Hammer
Image credits: Andre Ermolaev
Image credits: J. G. Damlow
Image credits: Orvar Atli
Image credits: -justk-
Image credits: Alban Henderyckx
Image credits: Alexander Shchukin
Image credits: Christian Schweiger
Image credits: Andre Ermolaev
Image credits: Manisha Desai
Image credits: imgur.com
Image credits: Einar Runar Sigurdsson
Image credits: Iurie Belegurschi
Image credits: Felix Röser
Image credits: Andre Ermolaev
Image credits: Johnathan Esper
Image credits: Max Rive
Image credits: Ivo De Decker
Image credits: unknown
Image credits: Max Rive
Image credits: Daniel Kaempf
Image credits: imgur.com
Image credits: Stefan Hefele
Got wisdom to pour?
When traveling all over Iceland in all kind of weather you see this every day and more spend some time and look at it.
the use of HDR is strong in this one. Not saying the places doesn’t look beautiful, just not as beautiful as in the pictures.
Not disagreeing with you but HDR is not what I would say is strong here as much as the color saturation of the images.
The human eye has really high dynamic range, much more than a camera so in fact these are more like what the eye will see.
What, overlaying one time lapsed photo on top of another? Who cares? It was one picture.
I wish these were not photoshoped …
Agree.
Iceland has been high on my list for some time now but after seeing these shot I want to go right now!
You are not only one Jen. We in Iceland aspecting new season record. You can touch for booking in winter or summer time traveling.
we just have herd about places like this or rather say seen in movies.. but looks like thers something real which we definetly need to experiance it.. its jus mind blowing photography..
Beautiful pictures! Never could imagine some of these scenes. Thanks for sharing this! – Vanessa
Fantastic shots from home, the colours of the beautiful mosses make my eyes water. Cheers Leanne and Hilmar
My hate it when scenic shots are photoshopped. It’s just really annoying. Seeing a photograph, knowing that it will look like this if I ever go there myself – that’s the amazing part! And really there’s just no need. Reality is plenty good enough!
I Totally agree -Photoshoping is absolutely unnecessary when such beautiful landscape is concerned. I can see that five of the photos have been given extra boost with colour, some are shot in time but overall this is the real thing. Perfect timing is the key to all of these photos, not photoshopping :-)
Well changing color and contrast exists since the darkroom era, circa 1900 when they invented film and negative. As great photographer Ansell Adams said: ” photographies are to some degrees interpretations of the original subject values” or Alfred Stieglitz: ” the equivalent of what I saw and felt”. Keyword here being “felt”.
Cameras struggle to portray the intensity sometimes.
Exactly It can see about 10% of the tones we see at said ISO setting. Photographs are interpretations of reality. Like paintings, unless. One should never, without doubting, consider photographs as truths, they are art rendition of something. If you want to see the real thing, go see the real thing.
I agree – I wonder if anyone would question the great painters on their interpretations of reality.
first image seems to be photoshoped more than that. I tried to reverse-search it and found *almost* the same image – the same without the people at all. So I guess they’re photoshoped?
I’m sure more than one person has photographed that location from close to the same spot. You found *almost* the same image because it was *not* the same image–but it was probably the same location. I doubt the people were photoshopped in. I’ve known people who’ve climbed and stood on peaks like that.
I’m from Iceland. Most of the pictures seem perfectly legit and do justice to the Icelandic nature. Some colors are a bit exaggerated, e.g sunlight, and the green stones, but not much. The time lap photos (waterfall and northern lights) are just what they are, time lapped.
But most of this, you can see if you come to visit Iceland. It all depends on the weather;)
Absolutely! I’m form the US but did a 10 day visit (Full Circle) in Sept 2012- It was hands down the most mind-blowingly beautiful place I’ve ever seen. It’s like you’re on another planet. Nothing photo-shopped about what I saw with my own eyes. Staggering … simply staggering!
True, I live there too :)
What I wouldn’t give to go to Iceland… absolutely breathtaking. The US blows!
The US has some of the most beautiful, unique wilderness on the entire planet. In fact, there is far more wilderness, and much more diversity of wilderness and life-forms, in the US than in Iceland. What you wrote is crazy.
can i become an Icelander by chance? hee…
me too, me too !
You make me want to come to Iceland! (Please don’t be offended, but in my ignorance I never put this on my bucket-list)
put in u bucked now
Ha! Just added it to my list too.
When photographing a scene it can be challenging to include all the highlights and shadows that your eye sees in nature in a single photo. It is often necessary to increase the contrast, or the highlights and shadows in PS so these can be included in your photo as you saw them in nature.
I can’t agree with you more. Especially Stieglitz’s quote – on point. I always tell my friends that I think it’s absolutely okay to photoshop (and to me, a major part of my process as a photographer) but it’s not okay to go overboard. I think a couple of these pictures were over-saturated.
At the same time, photographers have different styles. I liked the ones that had lower saturation because that’s what I might have done. It’s all preference and style.
And sometimes photoshopping is absolutely necessary – cameras cannot see the same way our eyes do, so if you take a picture of a sunset, the light of the sky and the darker landscape are competing. The combination of a good photographer and a little help with photoshop will allow that picture to reflect what the eye can already see.
The only question is whether you like the photograph… how it was created is irrelevant!
heck artists have been expressing in surreal colors…thanks to mental additives for a lot longer!
I can see your point but for me as a new photographer I like to keep things as natural looking as possible and only use processing software to enhance things a little. I’ve seen some photographs that look so much paintings that you can no longer tell that they are photographs
If you’ve ever tried to take a video or picture with a digital camera and make it look awesome, you’ll find out that they can be pretty flat and boring and not give a sense of how awesome something really is. Sometimes post processing is necessary.
I understand your point, but I also am learning the reasons for retouching photos from personal experience.
It is perfectly fine to have a preference for or against or for using a photoshop technique I look at these creations of the photographer and understand it is their work, their creation not mine and I am only an observer. When a parson oversaturates or does anything to modify a photograph that is really their business. I
doubt anyone with a digital camera would appreciate a film photographer knocking their work because it was digital. All photographic medium is altered when printed even film. I think we need to relax more and learn from what we see rather than feel we need to teach the world what theyt should appreciate. This is a highly overworked image I like but it isn’t the scene as originally taken.
What SMNDVLL said…In Photoshop there is tool called DODGE and BURN.Those same tools were used manually while photo paper was exposed in the darkroom.One looked like paddle that would block (dodge) the light, and burn tool was piece of black paper with a hole that will allow image to be burned in some areas.Problem with all these images they look re-scaled from the original smaller sizes. But if you have money to personally enjoy the scenery, go ahead.I am still enjoying this artists “Photoshopped” images.
I’d prefer art to take me out of reality. I live in reality, it’s nice to escape every once in a while.
That’s the point of good photography. It is to capture reality in a way that can take you away from your own reality.
dem pitchers still nice lookin’
Show me *any* professional photograph that has not been retouched, and I will show you a liar.
(And that goes for pre-Photoshop too) – retouching is part of the photographic process, not an addition to it.
The photograph taken and used for Windows 98 (the field). Look it up. No photoshop on that most recognizable image.
I am sure there would have been a little tweaking going on. Very little imagery you see today comes straight out of a camera and straight into print.
agreed. photoshopping nature pix is like an amateur artist trying to improve a Rembrandt painting. be humbled enough by nature to not try and outdo it. photoshop is for photos of people who lie to your face by making a lie of their own face.
Even Ansel Adams touched up his photos.
Photography is an art form. Get used to it.
When I was in junior high school a group of us visited Ansel Adams’ studio near Big Sur. He took us into his darkroom and explained the process of trying many different things to get the results he wanted. He showed us many versions of his famous “Moon over Half dome” picture and talked of how he had done many tries to get the one that was so famous. He emphasized that photography was art and that his pictures were, in a sense, unnatural. He talked of the many days he spent trying to get one special shot and that it was not something anyone would really see. I have to especially Bob here because I was fortunate enough to meet Ansel Adams’ and hear it from the horses mouth, so to speak.
just don’t like the water in streams or water-falls and such made to look like old people’s hair and milky soup. I love water and it’s sparkle
That’s a technique, and it’s called placing-your-camera-on-tripod-and-taking-long-exposure-photos.
Don’t be a hater.
I’m with you 100% Loon. Waterfall time lapse photos are soooooo boring.
I wouldn’t call it photoshoping. These pictures are all taken with professional cameras, and hence you have all the image data saved and can play a lot more with contrast, highlihts, shadows, colours, etc etc. While these are quite necessary to adjust for the picture to be less static and more real, I have to agree that many of these photos are a bit over-saturated and exagerated in some aspects. But still, these kinds of enhancements have been around way before digital imaging existed.
you are right. The colors seem to be fake
no fake, that’s how it is
It is likely that all of these shots have been photoshopped. Most photographers who shoot in digital do post-processing on all of their images. Most cameras, no matter how great, can’t quite capture the range of color, tone, contrast, texture, and clarity that your eyes can see. Some level of editing is almost always necessary to make an image more like what you actually see. Reality is plenty good enough, indeed! But, unfortunately, most cameras and lenses are not.
Ishep: “It is likely that all of these shots have been photo-shopped.”
That maybe so but having lived in Iceland for four years and been to many of the spots this photographer shot from, I can attest to the accuracy of the photos. Whether the film/DSLR accurately captured what the eye see’s is a different matter entirely. I would maintain that if the photographer did any photo-shopping it was merely to ensure the images more closely matched what the eye beholds and that in and of itself is a rather remarkable skill. The photos above look nearly identical to what I’ve witnessed first hand. Just plain stunning. :)
I agree, some of the processing here is extremely poor.
The point is…Iceland is fucking amazing. Nothing else matters.
Yes, exactly! Not that a random discussion of the virtues of Photoshop isn’t vaguely interesting, if a little timeworn by now. The main point is that these are all genuine images of Iceland. I’ve been, and it IS, or at least can be, very like these images. Completely amazing. What is a real pity is that imaging technology has evolved to the point where many people are now so skeptical of photographs that they stop seeing the image and just see the presence (or absence) of the technology. My thanks to the photographers who captured these beautiful images and brought me back to one of my favorite places on earth!
it looks like that…:) I can promise you that!
Thank you man, that’s exactly what I was thinking looking at this picture, they managed to “uglify” these landscapes…
Thank you man, that’s exactly what I was thinking looking at this picture, they managed to “uglify” these landscapes…
After visiting Iceland in Septemer I can tell you that this is the imagery and scenery I saw with my eyes also <3 These photos are real and Iceland looks like this in reality!! It is pure beauty :)
Hi, – there is not much done by photoshop, if at all – This is how Iceland and those places really look like. I have been there a couple of times, – lived and worked there as well. It’s an amazing nature which has to be experienced in order to believe.
I would be okay with note at the bottom that says “This photo has been electronically edited and improved” Then I would know that it is art – and that reality is not quite as spectacular. But that the artist wanted to put the best spin on it.
I hate whining. Your work hasn’t been published so you can’t complain about yourself yet. Keep trying and you’ll make it.
You are hater…of Photoshop use.
Amazing place :)
I hate it when someone ruins a fabulous scenic with a human being right in the middle of it. Beautiful tho
It must be painful for you to think of who takes these pictures…
Adding a human being adds scale to a photograph. It helps you realize the size and scope of what you are looking at.
It can also help you imagine yourself there or understand more what it’s like. Like the man “sleeping” on those green rounded objects shows that they actually are soft and comfortable to lay on. I used to love laying and jumping on those as a kid.(: